


Symbiosis

by alouette_des_champs



Series: Youth of the Nation [1]
Category: NADDPOD - Fandom, Not Another D&D Podcast, Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Cuddling & Snuggling, F/M, Families of Choice, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Not Another D&D Podcast - Freeform, Pining, Roommates, Useless bisexual, naddpod, one big bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-09 20:37:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18924571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alouette_des_champs/pseuds/alouette_des_champs
Summary: There is no such thing as a routine night out with friends like these.





	Symbiosis

**Author's Note:**

> I had to adjust ages because it turns out that IRL, it's super weird for a couple of twenty-somethings to hang out with a sixteen-year-old. I put Bev at nineteen. The other two are still a couple of years older.
> 
> I had a lot of fun trying to fit as many NPCs as I possibly could into this fic, and I think I hit a fairly impressive number for the sheer amount of randos the BoB meets every episode.

It was Saturday night, and Moonshine was a couple of drinks in, which naturally meant that she was on the dance floor, whipping her unkempt mass of red hair around recklessly, her eyes shut tight against the frenetic pulses of colored light that came from the LED projector near the front of the bar. There wasn’t a single thought in her head; just a pleasant, drunken emptiness, a fuzzy euphoria. The music was always horrible at Mishka’s place, an annoying, tinny stream of country-western oldies and hair metal ballads, but once you’d had enough of the special punch, it quickly ceased to matter.

Her eyes flew open when she felt someone bump her, ready to throw hands if some dude was going to try to start grinding up on her to the Whitesnake classic “Here I Go Again,” of all things, but it was just Hardwon, hulking and staggering with his flannel sleeves rolled up to his elbows. She could see part of the stick-and-poke he had let her do on him, just above the crease on the inside of his arm.

“Hey,” he called over the music, grabbing her wrist and pulling her closer so that he could shout directly into her ear. “I think that girl over there is checking me out.”

She looked over her shoulder at the bar. There was a blonde girl in a little red dress sitting on one of the stools, staring off into the middle distance, looking wildly disinterested in anyone or anything. Moonshine felt a little punch of secondhand despair; he always seemed to want exactly what he couldn’t have. Nevertheless, she smiled encouragingly. “You should go talk to ‘er.”

“Yeah?”

“Totally.” He clapped her on the back with a grin and took off for the bar.

“You really think he has a chance with that girl?” Bev asked skeptically, sidling up beside her. He was an awkward, gangly nineteen; he’d hit a growth spurt a couple of months back, right about the time his braces had finally come off. He didn’t seem quite sure what to do with the extra length in his arms and legs.

“Sure, I believe in miracles.” She smirked and bumped him with her hip, then jerked her head toward the door. He followed her out onto the patio, where they sat down at a painted picnic table, surrounded by other small clusters of punks smoking and laughing. She lit a cigarette, her ears ringing in the relative quiet. The cool air felt good on her flushed face.

“Wish Alanis was here,” she muttered. “She’d have a couple of blunts in ‘er pocket.”

“You’ve had, like, six shots. I think you’re plenty fucked up.” She made a face at him. 

“Who’re you, my mee-maw? You drunk enough to call your boyfriend and tell him how much you miss ‘im yet?” His boyfriend was back in the town where they had both grown up, the place Bev had moved away from a year ago to go to school. He wasn’t on the best terms with his family, and he wasn’t in school anymore, either, but he held onto the relationship even though long-distance was hard to maintain. She teased him about it, but really, she admired him. She had never been able to make anything work for that long regardless of distance.

“Shut up.” Bev glanced down at his phone, grinning sheepishly. The fairy lights strung over the patio glinted off the glitter she had sprinkled liberally over his cheeks when they’d been getting ready in the apartment earlier that night. “He’s probably asleep already. What about you? Who are you gonna drunk-text tonight?”

“Let’s spin the wheel,” she drawled sarcastically. She scrolled through her contacts, dragging on her cigarette. “How ‘bout…Shae?”

“Firstly, she’s on a yoga retreat in India, and secondly, she is never going to get with you.”

“Fine, fine. Luna?”

“You tell me. Is the moon full?” 

Moonshine leaned back, blowing out a dramatic cloud of smoke. “Oh, boy, we’re really scrapin’ the bottom of the barrel here. There’s always Triss.”

Bev scoffed. “Please respect yourself, Moonshine. For me.” 

“You’re right. What about my high school boyfriend Billy Ray?” 

“Isn’t Billy Ray your cousin?” He screwed up his face in distaste, but she shook her head.

“Different Billy Ray.” Just then, Hardwon sat down heavily at the table with them. He silently handed each of them another beer, scowling. There was a moment of tense silence.

“Remember the time you threw a beer at Galad’s head on this very patio, Moonshine?” Bev said, searching for a topic that wasn’t “striking out with women.”

“How could I forget the best fuckin’ night of my life?” she scoffed. Galad Rosell was the frontman for a popular local Christian rock band. He was also a smarmy, holier-than-thou asshole who liked to make as much trouble for the three of them as possible. His favorite insults were of the homophobic variety, most of which both she and Bev were so unimpressed by that they were easy to ignore. The last straw, the thing that had turned her beer-throwing fantasy into a messy reality, had been a series of pointed digs about Hardwon’s coke habit. Hardwon himself had not been there, of course; Galad wasn’t stupid enough to insult someone several times larger than him to his face. Moonshine had simply taken it upon herself to defend those who were not there to defend themselves. She had spent months watching her friend struggle with his nascent drug habit. There was nothing funny about it. There _was_ something profoundly funny about Galad Rosell stomping away from her, fuming and soaked in PBR.

“Still wish I had seen that blessed moment with my own two eyes,” Hardwon said wistfully, raising his drink in her direction.

“Next time I see him I’ll stage a repeat performance for ya.” She winked and drained her beer.

Later, crammed in the Uber on the way home, Hardwon let his head rest on her shoulder. 

“You fallin’ asleep?” she asked, amused, settling her temple against the crown of his head. 

“I’m not even tired,” he muttered, always defensive.

“Bullshit.”

“Seriously. I’m ready to party.” Bev covered his mouth to hide a snicker.

“Bars are all closed, big guy.”

“We can go home, then, I guess.” Moonshine rolled her eyes, smiling to herself.

When they stumbled into the apartment that they shared, they were greeted by a little grey terrier who scrambled frantically around their ankles, yipping insistently. Tripping over his wiggling form every two steps, Moonshine let Pawpaw out into the backyard to pee and chase moths for a while. She shuffled back into the darkened kitchen to get a drink of water.

The wedding invitation that had arrived that morning was still sitting out on the counter, the whole reason they had gone out in the first place. It was a tasteful white card with gold script and a black and white portrait of the happy couple looking deep into one another’s eyes. _You are invited to celebrate Gemma and Gerard’s special day!_ She picked it up and stuck it on top of the microwave, out of sight. She leaned her elbows on the counter and buried her face in her hands for a moment, breathing out.

Moonshine had come to the city to get a better job, to earn money for her mother’s medical bills, to try to stop the bank from foreclosing on the house she had grown up in. The daily text updates from her cousins and her uncle Cobb were getting steadily more grim, and while her mother was never anything but positive and encouraging, she knew that she was running out of time to make things right. She was going to have to face it: there was nothing here for her. She had barely gotten her GED. Nobody was going to hire her to do anything but mop floors and fry grits, and it just wasn’t enough. She could gallivant around with her friends drinking and smoking and raising hell all she wanted, but it would not change everything that was wrong with her, everything she was incapable of doing. This thought, this reality was always two steps behind her, ready to catch up as soon as she stopped moving for even a moment.

“Moonshine!” Hardwon called from down the hall, interrupting her spiral.

“Comin’!” she replied. She let Pawpaw back in, and he trotted after her as she stumbled into one of the bedrooms. She misjudged the distance between the door and the mattress, tripped, and fell face-first into the king-sized bed. “Oof.”

“You guys could sleep in your own beds, y’know,” Bev said wryly, but it was clear that he didn’t mean it.

“No fuckin’ chance! One Big Bed is a tradition,” Moonshine said firmly, wiggling closer to her friend.

“Tradition!” Hardwon repeated vehemently. After a night out, they all would camp out in Bev’s comically over-sized bed, sometimes to watch a movie, sometimes just to pass out together. It was one of the many little quirks of their friendship that meant the world to her.

“Fine.” Just then, his phone began to ring. He dug it out of his pocket and answered.

“Hi, babe. You’re up late.”

“It’s his boyfriend,” Moonshine stage-whispered. 

“Ooooo.” Hardwon poked Bev in the side like a middle-school bully.

“Hold on, Erlin, Moonshine and Hardwon are here. Yeah, they’re kicking me out of my own room.” He stuck his tongue out at them, climbed out of the bed, and padded out of the room, closing the door behind him. She rolled over to face her remaining bedfellow. 

“Looks like it’s just us chickens,” she murmured. 

“Looks like,” he replied, rubbing his hand over his face, scratching at his beard. “I kinda want to sleep, but I kinda want to eat a whole pizza.”

“Me too. You think Bev’ll get us pizza?”

“Probably not. He’s too busy doing phone sex or something.” He scooted closer to her, making a face.

“Ew.” She reached out and wound her freckled arms around his neck.

“Gross.” He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her flush against him. She kissed him like she’d been waiting to do it all night, open mouthed and heavy, his beard scratching her chin. It wasn’t the first time they’d kissed. These days, it happened pretty much every time they drank together. They never talked about it the morning after, and it never went any farther than kissing, but she couldn’t say that she didn’t look forward to it. She did not want to analyze her feelings any more closely than that.

They broke apart, foreheads touching, breathing into one another’s mouths. There was a lot Moonshine wanted to say, but her brain was running at half speed. By the time she untangled the words, she realized that Hardwon was asleep, snoring quietly. She snuggled up under his chin, burying her face in his shirt. He smelled like sweat and alcohol, a hint of some kind of body spray, motor oil from working on the junky old car his father had left for him. She would have recognized that smell anywhere.

A few minutes later, she felt the bed dip as Bev climbed back into the bed. He curled up against her back, wrapping one skinny arm around her. She felt loved, sandwiched between the two of them. She had felt plenty loved growing up with her mess of brothers and sisters and cousins, of course, but she had never really felt special. She had never had anything all her own. _This_ was hers, and she was fiercely protective of it, of her friends. She was going to make it work, somehow. She didn’t care how many beers she had to throw.


End file.
